Henry Ford father of car industry

Henry Ford & Thomas Edison

Around 1896, Henry Ford attended a meeting with Edison Company employees in New York. At the party, Henry Ford was led by Alex Dow, director of the Detroit power center, to meet Thomas Edison and the engineer, and was introduced to the man who had just finished building an oil-powered car. This creative work of Ford caught Edison's attention. The doctor told Ford to sketch the car. Henry Ford used the menu, flipped the back and doodled the drawings. Knowing the components of the motor vehicle, Edison had to exclaim: "You're on the right track, an auto picks up fuel, a good way, keep going!" .

When the party was over, Henry Ford felt too excited. Thanks to the proper encouragement of Edison the great scientist, Henry Ford was actively pursuing the improvement of the car's machinery, and seven years later, the establishment of Ford Motor Company.

Henry Ford was not the first person to invent a car, but he was the first to find a mass-production system and a way to meet the consumer market. At that time, people considered cars a luxury and car makers only thought of making that expensive "toy" for the rich. Henry Ford had a different mindset. He was interested in the masses, so he judged that the car must have simple and durable machines, light and easy to disassemble, with the price of the car suitable for the budget of middle-class consumers. These principles were adopted by Henry Ford for the famous "T-type" car.

Henry Ford had set up the car racks that made the time needed to assemble a car be reduced from 14 hours to 93 minutes. In many parts of the United States, Henry Ford established production facilities and from 1917 to 1927, nearly half of all cars manufactured in the United States branded Ford. Particularly for "T-type" cars , the production speed is 10 units in 16 minutes and in 19 consecutive years, 15 million cars have been built. In addition, the cost of buying a car is greatly reduced, from 850 dollars in 1908 to 550 dollars in 1913, 440 dollars in 1915 and 290 dollars in 1924.

Of all the engineering businesses in the United States, "T-type" cars have been a great and best success. James Couzens, the first commercial director of Ford Motor Company, wants to cede his share to his sister, Rosetta Hauss, for $ 200. Mrs. Rosetta also disliked those shares, but she was willing to spend $ 100 to buy them, doubting that 10 years later, the share's interest was 95,000 dollars and in 1919, when Ford wanted to buy As for small stakes, Rosetta sold for $ 260,000, which was only worth $ 100 in the past. There are many others, such as two lawyers Horace Rackham and John Anderson, who spent 10,000 dollars in the past, then collected 25 million! It was Alex Dow who regretted having turned down the shares of Ford Motor Company because no one expected the magic of Technology.

Henry Ford's youthful period.

Henry Ford as a child

Henry Ford was born in 1863 in the town of Dearborn, Michigan, whose father was an Irish farmer and a Dutch mother. Henry Ford is a man who is both courageous and extravagant, a famous industrial figure who is both adamant and temperate, and has been obsessed with the idea of ​​a car as a sitting boy. beside his father in a carriage full of hay, running on the road of Dearborn, Michigan. This 13-year-old Henry was surprised when he saw a car running in the opposite direction without a horse-drawn donkey. His first reaction was to jump to the ground, run back and watch carefully under the car and ask the driver.

From that day on, Henry no longer wanted to hear anyone say anything about farming. He asked his father to go learn a mechanic. Henry has repaired a lot of plows and harvesters and managed to exploit a small sawmill.

In 1891, Henry Ford became a mechanic at the Edison Illuminating Company 's Detroit Power Center. He explained to his wife that he was satisfied with the small salary of Edison Company because of this, he could learn about electricity which was essential for the car he had spent many years. research school. The fact that her husband received a new job caused Clara to leave her newly built home in Dearborn, to work hard to move the house, but these did not make Ms. Clara complain. She has been repeatedly explained about a car that does not use horse-drawn horses and she also believes in the success that will come. As for Henry Ford, he was too passionate about explosive engines, so he often forgot all day pay at Edison Company.

In the 1880s, mechanicalists began to apply small engines to a passenger vehicle. On January 29, 1886, Karl Benz received a patent on a raw fuel vehicle, and in the following year, performed it on the street in the province of Mannhelm, Germany. In the United States Charles and Frank Durya were built in 1893 in Springfield, Massachusetts, the first gas-powered car. Meanwhile, on Christmas Eve 1893 when his son Edsel was only 7 years old, Henry Ford also completed a machine to blow a cylinder. Henry had installed the machine in the kitchen and Clara helped her husband in the operation of the engine, adjusting the machine . Soon after, Ford built a 2-cylinder engine. The warehouse to store coal became his factory. On June 4, 1896, Henry Ford finished his first car and immediately tested it on Grand River Avenue and when it came to Washington Road, the car was turned off.

At that time, car manufacturers often advertised cars in the race so to give people attention to themselves, Henry Ford built a 26-horse racing car in 1901 to compete with the car. by Alexander Winton, Ohio's leading car manufacturer. On the 10-mile long road race in Gross Point, Michigan, Henry Ford's car won the prize. After this success, Henry Ford and a group of 12 investors immediately began to set up Ford Motor Company. The capital is US $ 100,000 with about US $ 28,000 in cash. In 1903, the Ford car factory had 125 workers, making 1,700 cars in three models at a price of $ 850. For that time, Ford cars weighed nearly 600 kilograms but were the lightest and cheapest, making it easy to sell. Thanks to prosperity, in just 4 years the Ford Company's capital increased to 1,000 percent.

At Ford Motor Company, Henry Ford owned most of the shares. The second largest outsider, James Couzens, was a former secretary of Alexander Malcomson and now the General Manager of the Company and later as Vice President and Treasurer, who is second in charge. Control the company in the years of producing "T-type" cars.

When driving Ford's car company, Henry Ford was very interested in the cost of the car and didn't want to make expensive models. He used his influence to reduce the number of production cars in 1906 so that Ford Company was rescued when the economic situation collapsed in 1907. Henry Ford also decided to make a new car type. , sure and cheap.

In the winter of 1906, Henry Ford partially separated a 12 x 15-foot factory in a factory on Detroit's Piquette Avenue to study a car of type T. He spent two years studying things. and how to build a new car. During the car race in Florida, Henry Ford considered a damaged car and was built in France and found that many components of this car were made of an unusual steel. Ford's engineering team knew that the French steel was a compound with Vanadium, which was both lighter and resistant to stress of up to 170,000 lbs while the US steel only had a maximum of 60,000 lbs. . Mr. Ford invited an metallurgist to make Vanadium-type steel for use in a T-type car. As a result, in the world at that time, Vanadium-containing steel compounds were only used for expensive cars. France and a Ford-style Ford car. This is a car that can be damaged without being broken.

From October 1, 1908, with an amount of US $ 850, customers could buy a lightweight T-type car, at about 1,200 lbs, quite powerful with a 4-cylinder machine and 20 horsepower, with 2 numbers. , very easy to drive and some other characteristics like simple, solid. After the first year of production, 10 thousand cars were sold and this is a new record. In 1909, businessman Robert Guggenheim sponsored a car race from New York to Seattle, and reached the destination with only two T-type cars, causing the Guggenheim to say: "I believe Mr. Ford knows. clear answers about common cars ".

In the early years, T-type cars were built in Piquette Avenue factory in the same way as other cars. But the demand for Ford cars has increased, making Henry Ford think about creating a new factory, with a new production system.

For many years as company president, Henry Ford held a large amount of cash so he could advocate a new policy without other pressures and thus, a new car factory. In Highland Park, it was styled by the leading engineering architect Albert Kahn and was inaugurated in 1910. This is a 62-acre workshop, with the largest stature that makes Mr. John D. Rockefeller, president of Standard Oil refining company, must say that the Highland Park car factory is an industrial miracle of the age.

In the early years, the way to assemble cars in this factory was organized from top to bottom, starting from the fourth floor, and the conveyers put many parts for workers to assemble, down to the third floor, the side of the car. added wheels, car body and car completed at the bottom floor, lined up in front of the office. In the first three years, the number of cars produced increased by 100 percent, from 19,000 in 1910 to 34,000 in 1911 and reached 78,440 in 1912.

In 1909, Henry Ford stated: "I will make cars democratic, everyone can afford one and almost every person will have a car." The starting price of a T-type car is $ 850, which has dropped to $ 575 in 1912 and this is lower than the average annual income of ordinary people in the United States. Henry Ford sacrificed a portion of the profits to increase the number of cars sold, which in 1913, the number of Ford cars sold was 248,000. Thanks to the new systematic and tactical economic policy, Ford Company's profits increased from US $ 3 million in 1909 to US $ 25 million in 1914. In 1908, Ford cars accounted for only 9.4 percent of the market. school, but surpassed 48 percent in 1914. Ford's T-type cars tame the car market in the world.

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Read: " Henry Ford, a friend of the workers "